Posts Tagged ‘iPhone Japan’

iPhone is doing better in Japan than Wired.com expected … much better! Nikkei.net has posted a report on Japanese tech market research company’s (BCN’s) survey of Japanese handset sales. This was not just a tiny sampling. 2,300 stores that sell mobile phones participated in the BCN survey. The results? In the smartphone category, the iPhone 3G 8GB easily came in at number one followed by the 16GB iPhone. The NTT CoCoMo Aquos SH-04A came in at number three. The iPhone 3GS launched just days ago (too late for the BCN survey) and with its enhanced camera and video capability, it’s a fair bet that iPhone 3GS will quickly move up the list of hot smartphones in Japan.

Smartphone best sellers in Japan:

iPhone 3G 8GB

iPhone 3G 16GB

Aquos SH-04A

Shiho Hishida poses with her new Apple iPhone

The report said that while ordinary cellphone sales are plummeting, smartphone sales have grown by nearly 80 percent in a year.

Perhaps it’s time for Wired.com to re-write (again) their anti-iPhone hit piece (Why the Japanese Hate iPhone)? It seems that carrying an iPhone in Japan doesn’t make you “look pretty lame” as Wired erroneously concluded.

Smartphone sales in Japan were up 68% last year to 1.58 Million Units. Projections for 2009 are 2.07 Million and for 2012 -3.65 Million. Yano specifically notes the iPhones introduction as the catalyst for the increase.

Softbank’s promotion for a “free” iPhone until the end of May was cited as indication of lack of demand. But clearly the anticipation of Apple upgrading the unit in June is spurring Softbank to clear stock. There are rumors, as well that Softbank will lose exclusivity to the iPhone later this year when NTT Docomo starts offering it in its line-up.

EXCERPT: Japanese wireless carrier KDDI has seen its growth stifled in July primarily by the iPhone 3G launch the same month, according to a report from the company itself. The company’s subscriber growth was near flat at just 17,000 new users for the month and saw the first month KDDI has known where the amount of cancellations with phone number portability, or the number of customers switching to rivals, overtook new subscriptions of the same kind.The sudden downturn comes just as the iPhone’s official carrier, SoftBank, saw an immediate spike and added 52,000 new users.

EXCERPT: NTT DoCoMo’s top brass must be kicking themselves right about now. Japan’s top mobile operator lost out to Softbank in the contest to sell Apple’s iPhone 3G, allowing the third-largest operator to bask in today’s hype and headlines. The iPhone’s arrival in Japan was front-page news in the evening editions of three of the country’s four major dailies.

But DoCoMo stands to lose more than just a little publicity. One fourth of DoCoMo’s 53 million subscribers in Japan account for 80% of the carrier’s data traffic, according to one industry insider who requested anonymity. Those 13 million, who spend a lot of time firing off emails and browsing the Internet, are DoCoMo’s best customers. They are the reason the carrier’s revenues aren’t declining at a faster rate. They also happen to be the most likely to benefit from the bigger screen and easy-to-use Net browser of an iPhone. Imagine if all 13 million of these DoCoMo subscribers suddenly decided to switch carriers.

After the crazy festivity in Omote Sando shop, other stores started selling the iPhone at noon.

Akihabara, a huge electronics town or “geek town” was another crazy one. At least one thousand people showed up in front of a big electronics store. Yurakucho is an office town. They had a big wave of people showed up. In front of “Big Camera:, 360 people waited. They had a nice event with Mr. Son and Aya Ueto (who played “Azumi”) showed up. She does commercials for Softbank. She said “I could use the iPhone without looking at a manual”.

July 11 (Bloomberg) — Apple Inc.‘s new iPhone went on sale today with crowds lining up outside stores in Tokyo and Auckland, New Zealand, as Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs takes aim at Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry.

Minoru Hagiyama arrived at Softbank Corp.’s store on Omotesando, Tokyo, at 6:30 a.m. local time to find about 1,300 customers already in front of him. The first started camping out three days ago to buy the iPhone 3G, an update of Apple’s handset that works on speedier third-generation wireless networks.

“I haven’t owned a mobile phone in about five years, I just didn’t feel the need, but this different,” said Hagiyama, 50, from Tokyo. “I don’t think of it as a mobile phone, more like a portable PC.'”